Saturday, October 31, 2015

Just in the last couple of weeks, I’ve talked to a retired Marine about his service in Vietnam. And another told me about being a young bride in Germany and her move to the U.S. with her GI husband.

The next several weeks brings family together for Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is an opportunity to ask family members to tell their stories.

StoryCorps, an organization that has made an educational project for adults and children, is holding “The Great Thanksgiving Listen” project.

The nonprofit has long gathered individuals stories on video in kiosks in New York’s Grand Central Station, and other cities. It also has an app for iPhones and Androids that videos an interview, and if you choose, uploads it to its site as well as to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

A man at a Woodbridge continuing-care facility recorded interviews with residents about their World War II memories. The interviews were submitted to the Library of Congress’ Veteran’s History Project.

These first-hand accounts enrich our understanding of history and will be of value to researchers.

Involving young people in the interview process can give them an appreciation of their elders and the road they have travelled.

It will also teach them history, research skills, interview techniques, listening techniques and improve their video literacy by making something with more thought than a seven-second Vine video.

It also shows respect.

While it would be great if your child’s teacher would promote the Great Thanksgiving Listen in the classroom, this is something your child can do.

It can be as simple as asking a loved one to sit for a minute and asking if you can video them answering a few questions.

But, a good video requires some preparation. The student should research the era or events they will be discussing so they have a basic understanding.

They should make a list of questions, but also be willing to move away from their script depending on how the interview goes.

Broaching some subjects can be difficult. Sometimes the person is reticent to talk about their memories. Combat veterans, however, often find it difficult to talk with non-veterans. For them, promise them you’ll limit the topic to non-combat times in the military, if they are more comfortable with that.

Modesty and shyness often interferes. The person may feel their story is not worthy of telling. On the other hand, it is hard to refuse a curious grandchild.

Perhaps you have to sneak up a bit on some subjects. Sit with the person and just chat. Gently broach the subject you want to cover, and then as they begin to get into it, stop them and gently ask if you can video the conversation since you consider it important.

An alternative to a video is going to Reddit.com, an online discussion site, and to its AMA subreddit.

AMA stands for Ask me Anything. I often see where a 20-something is sitting with a grandparent and begin with, “I’m here with my grandfather, who is 95 and was a medic on Guadalcanal. Ask him anything.”

Others on the site pepper them with questions. The grandchild reads the better ones aloud to their grandparent and then dictates responses.

Some are quite compelling. This week’s link post at www.FamilyTechOnline.com has some examples of good AMAs.

Next week’s column will be some thoughts on shooting the interview and perhaps editing tips.

Even if not uploaded, this type of video can be a valuable family heirloom. I wish I’d learned more from my grandmother before she died. She had worked for a man who’d been in the Civil War around 1912 when she was 20.

How I would have loved to ask her about the memories he might have shared with her.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

I glanced over at my son playing on our gaming PC. He was speaking into his headset, talking to other players. They were from all over the world of various ages and backgrounds.

I was struck yet again with a sense: we live in the future.

The video games are not the only trigger for me. I have a new app on my phone, FlightRadar 24, which amazes me.

It shows all airplanes overhead. Select one and it tells you its type, airline, flight number, origin, destination and route. If a plane declares an emergency, it alerts me if I want to follow its story.

What’s really cool is if I aim my phone at a plane overhead, it identifies it for me.

All this is done using a database of aircraft under Air Traffic Control, but also the GPS sensor in my phone telling it where it is, plus the other sensors that tell the software where the phone is pointing to and how it is oriented.

There are also devices like Microsoft’s Kenect 2 for the XBox. It has a series of cameras and microphones that could almost be living in the future. It recognizes who is watching TV at a given moment. And it understands hand and arm gestures.

And who isn’t amazed by their smartphones. We carry a powerful computer hooked up to the knowledge of the world, in our pockets.

The iPhone 6 runs 3.36 billion instructions per second. The computer in Apollo 11 did 43 instructions per second. That is 43 instructions per second.

If you watched the original Star Trek, you recognize the communicator as the predecessor of the cell phone.

Encyclopedia Galactica, the fictional encyclopedia of all knowledge of the galaxy, that Asimov first wrote about and most of heard about in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, begat Wikipedia.

Much of the futuristic devices that give me the We-Live-In-the-Future vibe were all first imagined in science fiction.

Author Neil Gaiman, a writer of sci-fi books and Doctor Who episodes, was a speaker at China’s first government sanctioned sci-fi convention in 2007. He had the opportunity to ask a government official why they had finally chosen to encourage science fiction after years of discouraging its reading.

The official explained China builds wonderful devices like the iPhone and other complex devices for consumers, medicine and other purposes. No other country can make such detailed, tiny and complex devices.

What China cannot do, said the official, is invent the products that are changing the world.

China sent a delegation to the U.S. and spoke with innovators at Apple, Google and Microsoft. The one constant these forward-thinking people had in common was they read science-fiction when young.

Gaiman said, “Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.”

Hopefully parents encourage their children to read for pleasure and let their children read whatever draws their interest.

Back when parents struggled with letting their children buy a game console, in the early Nintendo days, one friend grudgingly gave in.

He subscribed to the Nintendo magazine and he decided over time it was worth buying the game console.

Find what you child wants to read, and make it available.

Encourage your children to at least sample science fiction. It won’t be for everyone, but don’t be like China and consider it meaningless fantasy of worlds that do not exist.

The worlds your children read about may become a world they want to help build by becoming an engineer, programmer, game designer or in another high-tech profession.

While not as spectacular as the NFL Google hires more engineers every year then the NFL hires players.

Teachers, doctors and social workers can change the world. Starry-eyed dreamers of faraway planets and the explorers seeking them out can as well.

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Saturday, October 17, 2015

The telephone is often the bane of our existence, yet it is the necessary enabler of business and personal interactions. If you sell things online, have a home or family-run business, or if you are a single wanting to talk to someone you met online, you need the telephone.

Yet there are risks to giving out your own phone number you should avoid.

For example, you sell a bicycle online. You don’t want to give the person your phone number to avoid the possibility of them calling you a year later telling you the bike has broken and they feel you sold them a defective item.

Or you want your one- or two-person family-run business to look like a bigger company but don’t want to hire a receptionist, what can you do?

There’s an app for the iPhone and Android called Burner that lets you purchase a phone number that is good for a time period you choose. That way, you can list that phone number in your online ad. Any calls coming into the app from that phone number, come into the app where you can answer or let them go to a voicemail setup for just that number and use.

Once the transaction is done, you can simply cancel the number and future calls to that number do not reach you.

Text messages can also be sent and received using a Burner phone number, so if you hand out the number to a someone, there is no reason they have to know that you have not given them your regular number.

If you need to call someone but do not want them to see your caller ID number, a Burner number shows only that phone number, not your own. This is valuable if you need to call a business you fear will put you on their telemarketing list. The number will only be good for a short while.

You may wonder why I do not recommend the service I use and have talked about before, Google Voice. Burner phones are better for a one-purpose use such as an online ad or dating service. My Google Voice is the only number I hand out. If a telemarketer does get hold of it, I can block that number from reaching me.

Blocking a number only prevents calls from that one number. A Burner number, once it expires, means the person who had that number to call you, cannot reach you from any phone, so there is that added security.

If you are running a business from your home, or your family has a small business and you’d prefer your customers not know how small you are, or that you are in your home, a service like Ringcentral might be good for you.

Ringcentral lets you setup a virtual PBX. That is, it gives you one phone number people can call and then type in an extension to reach a specific person or department. Transfers to the sales department, shipping or support could all go the same person if need be. The call is forwarded to a landline or to a mobile phone. You can even have it ring multiple phones such as your home office line and your cell, so no matter where you are you can answer it.

The auto attendant can route calls based on rules, or by the caller entering in an extension number.

It can even give your tiny business a toll-free number, as well as call recording and conference calling.

Ringcentral can tie into Office, Dropbox, SalesForce, ZenDesk and other systems to give you an integrated communications system.

And instead of paying a receptionist for 40 hours a week, you pay once for just the time it is taking your calls using services like My Receptionist.

Additional services let it book appointments for you using an online appointment system you can use. The appointment system can send out confirmations and reminders to your customers via email, text message and even Twitter.

It can even take orders for you and process credit card payments. All this is setup to be an add-on to a Ringcentral phone system.

All of these services give you a managed telephone system for a set cost per user, per month. You can have large business services, without having to have staff and equipment of your own to manage it.

I’ve used Burner, Ringcentral, My Receptionist and Google Voice as examples. There are many providers for these services. Check this week’s Link Post at WW.FamilyTechOnline.com for resources.

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Saturday, October 10, 2015

Last month Apple announced new phones and the iPad Pro. Now it’s Google’s turn.

Google has two new phones, the Nexus 5X and the Nexus 6P. The chief advantage of a Nexus device is that it is first to get new operating systems. These phones come with the latest Marshmallow version of Android, announced a few months ago. When the next version of Android comes out, these phones will be first in line for them. And the upgrades come direct from Google.

Other Android phones have to wait until the phone’s manufacturer releases a version of Android for the phone, and your carrier approves and transmits it out to you. Some current phones won’t get Marshmallow for months; some older phones not at all.

The 5X is made by South Korea’s LG and sports a 5.2 inch display. The 6P, made by Chinese maker Huawei, sports a bigger 5.7 inch screen.

Both phones have a fingerprint reader for secure access, high resolution front and back cameras, and come unlocked so they can be used on all the major US carriers including Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint. And both phones can be used on Google’s own service, Project Fi. Fi runs on both the Sprint and T-Mobile networks, switching off from those and Wi-Fi, whichever is the stronger network at the moment.

Both phones use the new C type USB connector. This small connector does not have a right way and a wrong way to go in, saving us from the agony of trying to plug in an upside down cable.

They also come with a $50 Google Play credit if ordered before Dec. 15. And also 90 days of Google Music service.

And for the first time, Google is offering a two-year protection program, Google Protect, guarding against mechanical breakdown or accidental damage for the two phones. It is $69 for the 5X, and $89 for the 6P. No word yet on if, or how much, of a deductible there might be.

Google also upgraded its Chromecasts. Our Chromecast is the best $35 item we’ve ever bought. Google has sold 20 million of them.

Chromecast hooks to your TV. You use an app on your phone, tablet or computer to select something to watch from Netflix, Hulu, TV networks and many other sources. You push a button on the app, and it tells the Chromecast to go get that program. Once that’s done, the phone is no longer required. It can even leave the house and the program continues.

Although with the phone, you can pause the program and resume it. You can even do that from an Android Wear watch.

Choosing and controlling my TV from my phone has always given me the strongest “we are living in the future” moments I’ve ever had.

Google updated the Chromecast with one that receives Wi-Fi signals better. It even lets you play some games on your TV. And a new version of Google Photos app lets you display your photos on the TV so you can share them with others. It’s sort of a 21st Century slide show to entertain dinner guests.

There also is an entirely new Audio Chromecast. It attaches to speakers and lets apps send it music via Wi-Fi. It plans to do for music, what Chromecast did for video.

Google also previewed a new tablet coming out before Christmas. The Pixel Tablet is a high-end Android tablet with an optional keyboard that attaches with magnets. The Pixel is clearly intended to compete with the newly announced iPad Pro, and Microsoft’s Surface.

Google also announced a family music plan, similar to Apple’s and for the same price, $15 a month.

It will stream music to your device and recommend music for each family member depending on their musical tastes.

A new photo app lets users copy photos to another’s phone. That way, if family members all take pictures while on vacation, they can copy the photos into one collection. And other family member, like grandma, can subscribe to the photos and see them and be notified when there are new ones.

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Saturday, October 3, 2015

I’ve come to the realization we should not to be trusted to back up our own computers. Backing up is planning for an unpleasant future and insurance agents will tell you how hard it is to get us to do that.

We need to make backup automatic and let our computers do the drudgery of protecting themselves.

Think about what’s on your computer – family photos, important documents, financial information, contacts phone numbers and addresses and more. All kinds of things you would not want to do without.

Until recently, I might have suggested services such as Crashplan, Carbonite or others that back up your computer to their cloud service. Most had drawbacks such as a high annual cost. And some of the plans only backed up the internal drive in your PC and none of the external ones.

And some plans refused to back up video files, often some of our best memories. And costs skyrocketed if there are multiple computers in the home, as is often the case.

Of the ones I looked at Crashplan’s $150-a-year plan for backing up two to 10 computers and an unlimited amount of data was probably the best.

It also had the advantage of letting you access your backed up files from an app on your phone.

To get going, you need to subscribe at its website and download the software to each of your computers. Getting it going should take less time than buying a life-insurance policy and you can do it alone. But, I was not impressed with its apps’ ease of use.

If you subscribe to Office 365, you automatically get a terabyte of storage at Microsoft’s cloud storage service OneDrive. Here’s what is amazing and it got by me when it was announced in October 2014. If you use up the terabyte, you get more. Microsoft says OneDrive has unlimited storage.

It said the unlimited storage was rolling out slowly and when I subscribed to my Office 365 a few months ago, I only received one terabyte. If you already have Office 365, you have a terabyte with more supposedly coming.

Or, if you do not have Office 365, you can subscribe for $6.99 a month.

Apparently you have to apply for space beyond one terabyte but I’ve seen people online mention they know users with tens of terabytes from OneDrive, all at no additional cost.

Or, if you want unlimited space without any concern, Amazon’s Cloud Drive is just $60 a year for unlimited space.

I lean towards OneDrive only because I already have Office 365.

Next I wondered, with this unlimited space on either OneDrive or Amazon Cloud, how can I back up to it?

I discovered a program called Arq. It backs up your PC or Mac and its external drives to a variety of cloud services including Amazon, OneDrive and Google.

I have been playing with its 30-day trial and have decided to buy it for our computers. It is a $40 one-time cost per computer or you can get a five-pack for $170.

As with any backup process, test it to make certain it meets your needs and use more than one system. Backup critical files not only to the cloud, but to local drives or have a USB drive capable of holding your most critical files.

There are all sorts of links, and additional information about this at this week’s link post at FamilyTechOnline.com.

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